Educating Joey Essex

I appeared recently on British television in an episode of the popular reality show
Educating Joey Essex.  The idea of the show was that Joey comes to America to learn about the American election.  I was Joey's taxi driver on two days of shooting.  First, picking him up at JFK and then driving him and the pro-Trump bloggers "Diamond and Silk" to the Trump Tower in Manhattan.  Joey had to keep the peace between me and Diamond and Silk as we had a bit of a difference of opinion about the candidates!

Great fun and a terrific crew.

To see an interview of Joey Essex talking about the show, click here.

To see Diamond and Silk on YouTube click here.

Pictures:

The Taxi TV And Me

My God, how I hate these things.

For those who may not know, let me first tell you what the Taxi TV is. It's a television monitor situated in the rear compartment of all yellow and green (outer borough) taxicabs in New York City. It's not, however, a regular TV like you'd have at home. Rather, it consists of pre-programmed information, the majority of it being clips from television talk shows, along with commercials and the occasional public service announcement. The entertainment, the pitches, and the hear-ye-hear-ye's are packaged in continuous loops which the passenger may see and hear twice or even three times during the course of a ride. The driver hears it whenever the meter is turned on, which on the average is 60% of his twelve-hour shift.

The speakers of the Taxi TV are situated about 24 inches behind the driver's head. Not only does the cabbie have no control over its coming on automatically when the meter is engaged, he has no control over the thing's volume. The passenger can, with a tap-tap-tap of his finger, raise the volume to make it suddenly blasting into the driver's ears. He may also turn it off, and many do just that if they can figure out how to accomplish the task. Most, however, simply ignore it while conversing with their riding companions or the driver, texting, or chatting on their phones. Thus the Taxi TV is, more often than not, just "noise".

And if all this weren't enough to make you scream, let me add that it was the city itself (Mayor Bloomberg, in particular) which mandated its presence in all cabs in 2008. It is there primarily to raise advertising revenue for medallion owners and the companies which won the contracts for its installation and maintenance. The drivers don't see a dime - of course!

It is very unpopular with the majority of the taxi-riding public.  And needless to say, the drivers universally hate the thing.

Well, my dislike for the Taxi TV has been welling up in me for all these years.  The only positive thing I can say about it is that it has given me a worthy replacement for my Giuliani rant.  (I had my Giuliani rant perfected to such a point that passengers in my cab, who may have made the mistake of saying something positive about former Mayor Giuliani to me, would have been happy by the end of the ride to sign a petition to have the man tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a pole.  It was a thing of elocutionary beauty.)

A few weeks ago an acorn dropped on my head and the idea occurred to me to make an offer to passengers in my cab to raise awareness of the outrageousness of the presence of a television monitor in a taxicab, or at least of its continuous noise.  I decided to give them a one dollar rebate on the ride if they would just turn off the damned sound.  

It made the New York Post.  

Click here for the link.

On Early Morning TV Sunday, Feb. 23

I have done a pre-recorded interview which will be aired on television in the New York City region on NBC's The Debrief With David Ushery at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 23.

What's that, you say you'll be asleep at 5:30 in the morning and you're damn well not getting up to watch it? Well, so you won't feel guilty, that's what DVRs are there for!

OR if you have no DVR or are somewhere else in the world other than in the New York City region, you could do a search using these words: "nyc-cabbie-writes-book nbc" and presto you'll be able to see just the video of the five minute interview without the rest of the show.

I am happy with this interview. We did it on Thursday on the street outside the famous 30 Rock building in Midtown. The host, David Ushery, was more than accomodating by showing my book to the camera, mentioning my blog, and asking his questions in a lively manner. His show, which I've seen in the past, is done in an interesting and unique format. He walks around a newsroom and speaks with reporters about newsworthy events of the past week. You get boots-on-the-ground, insightful commentary from those close to the stories. Plus there are interviews, such as my own, with New Yorkers who've done something noteworthy. (If I don't say so myself!)

So I recommend watching the whole program if you can.

Television Appearance

Hear ye, hear ye, I will be appearing in a documentary program called Super Systems, which will make its first broadcast this Sunday, Dec. 11th, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time here in the U.S. It's part of a series about how certain successful "systems" work, in this case the system of taxicabs in New York City.

I was located via this blog by the production company doing the show back in September. We spent a few days taping interviews, in and out of taxicabs, about my experiences as a taxi driver and my opinions about the taxi industry. It was a nice validation and I was told I did well in the edits and am included in a sizable portion of the show. So please check it out if this sounds of interest and, I should add, if you can. There is kind of a catch here, at least at this time, which is that the show is in 3D!

Back in February Sony, I Max, and the Discovery Channel launched a new network called 3Net which is meant to be viewed on televisions that are equipped for 3D viewing. It's a thing of the future kind of thing. If you go to this website, http://www.3net.com/show/23/supersystems/category/6,
you can learn about the channel and find out how to find it in your area. Super Systems may also be able to be seen on regular tvs sometime in the future, I am told, perhaps on the Discovery Channel, but for now it's only available on 3Net. In the New York area the cable service which carries the 3Net station is Directv.

Here I am soaking in a bit of my fifteen minutes...


... I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!

Village Voice Interview

I was interviewed last week in the online edition of The Village Voice, New York's "alternative weekly" newspaper. Here's the link:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/02/nyc_taxi_driver.php

I liked the way it was done - questions sent to me in advance - as it gave me a chance to give thoughtful and hopefully entertaining answers. My only gripe is that some of my answers were edited out, for brevity's sake, I am told. So since, hey, I have my own voice right here, this is what I wanted people to know about one of the touchy subjects in the interview that was not published...

If you haven't ridden in a New York taxi since 2008, all cabs are now equipped with television monitors in the back seats which give out information, advertising, news, feature stories, and more advertising to passengers. The pictures and sound - the volume of which is under the control of the passenger - come on automatically when the meter is started. The speaker is about nine inches behind the head of the driver who must listen to the same repetitive programming over and over again during the course of a twelve-hour shift.

Obviously, the drivers hate these things. And most passengers, who may or may not be aware that they can turn it off, aren't too crazy about it, either.

Here's the thing that I wanted known that wasn't in the Village Voice piece, and I think it's an important point that has been overlooked by the public, the media, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission. It's that these things are dangerous. How so? They are distracting and irritating to the driver. As if driving a cab in the streets of New York City wasn't distracting and irritating enough without them!

The analogy I make to passengers in my cab when this subject comes up, and it comes up often, is how would you like it if, when you were flying in an airplane, there was a television nine inches behind the head of your pilot, the volume of which was under the control of the passengers? For that matter, how would you like it if this thing was nine inches behind the head of your bus driver? Well, guess what? Statistically, riding in a taxi is more dangerous than riding in either a plane or a bus.

Several years ago I was hailed from the street by a woman in a wheelchair. After helping her into the cab and putting the wheelchair in the trunk, she told me her story. She had been paralyzed in an accident in a taxicab in Chicago.

Have I made my case?

The main justification for the existence of the city agency known as the Taxi and Limousine Commission is to ensure the safety of the passengers. That is priority number one. So to add an unnecessary and unwanted element into the environment of the taxicab which is distracting and irritating to the driver is utterly contrary to its mandate.

And it needs to be changed.

So there is my rant. Other than its omission, I was quite happy with the interview. Hope you'll give it a click.

********

And while you're clicking, let's not forget to click here for Pictures From A Taxi!

A Message To Soupy

I was really saddened to learn last week of the passing of one of my all-time favorite entertainers, Soupy Sales. If you were an American growing up with a television in the '60s, Soupy Sales was a name you would know. His unique brand of comedy, with its trademark pies in the face, took the country by storm for a few years. I just loved the guy, and if you want to get a taste (pun intended) of his humor, do a video search with his name. You'll be able to see samples of the old tv shows.

Anyway, I have a Soupy Sales story. No, I didn't have him in my cab. But maybe this is the next best thing...

Back in the early '90s I was in the habit of taking a break in my shift every night at about 9 p.m. at a typical New York bagel joint called "Hot Bagels" on 2nd Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets. I liked the place because not only did they have great bagels, but it was in a convenient location and there was always a parking space across the street. Those are important factors in the choice a cabbie makes for where to take his break. I would go into Hot Bagels and get my sesame or poppy seed bagel and a cup of coffee and be back in the cab in five minutes. Time is money in my business.

It's quite common in restaurants and other shops in New York to see autographed head shots of celebrities displayed on the walls like trophies. It's as if to say, "Hey, this isn't just any coffee shop - this is the coffee shop where Liza Minelli comes in to get her rice pudding!". Usually there are many such celebrity photographs on display and I've always found it interesting to check them out.

So the very first time I went into Hot Bagels - I believe it was in 1990 - I noticed right away something quite unusual. This place didn't have numerous celebrity head shots on its walls - it had only one. Staring out at me from his place on the wall directly behind the cash register was the smiling face of Soupy Sales.

I asked the fellow behind the counter why, out of all the celebrities whose pictures might theoretically be on the wall, would Soupy Sales be the one to be so honored. He told me that Soupy lived in the neighborhood and comes in regularly to get his bagels.

Wow! I was impressed. Perhaps it was this even more than the convenient location and easy parking that kept me coming back to Hot Bagels. I started to think about what I would say to Soupy if we should ever be there at the same time. I remembered a particular song he used to sing and I decided to incorporate some of the lyrics in the song into a bagel shop context, just as a personal homage to Soupy, should we ever be there at the same time. But, unfortunately, we never were.

Still, the decision to create this effect on Soupy was active in my universe and intention is senior to the obstacles of the material world, right? So I came up with a new idea. As time went by I had gotten familiar with the fellow behind the counter, a friendly, Moroccan man named Raz. I decided to use Raz as my conduit to get to Soupy.

The song I was fond of was a ridiculous thing called "Pachalafaka" (pronounced pah-ka-LAF-a-ka) that was typical of Soupy's comedy. The lyrics that I remember went like this:

Pachalafaka, pachalafaka,
They whisper it all over Turkey.
Pachalafaka, pachalafaka,
It sounds so romantic and perky...

...and it goes on using this nonsense word, "pachalafaka" throughout the song until the end where it's revealed that no one knows what "pachalafaka" means.

(Click on this link... https://youtu.be/b8ZSoFuarFI... to watch Soupy sing it.) 

So I told Raz, a cheerful guy, about Soupy and how big he had been in the USA in the '60s. Raz, having grown up in Northern Africa, had no idea that his customer was so famous and seemed quite pleased that a person of this stature would come into his shop. So I knew he would help me with my plan. After a few more bagel stops I laid it on him.

I wanted Raz to tell Soupy that he wanted him to try something that's new in his shop that's delicious and goes great with bagels. It's called "pachalafaka" and it's imported from Turkey! And then watch for Soupy's reaction.

Raz thought this was a great idea and was eager to get it right. I knew the potential stumbling block in this caper would be the word "pachalafaka" itself. For one thing it sounds like the name of a real food that might be available in a bagel shop, "baklava", the Middle Eastern pastry. And for another thing, it's got five syllables, and that's a lot of syllables to remember. Both Raz and I were concerned that he might screw it up, so what Raz did was to write "pak-ha-LAF-a-ka" ON THE WALL. He told me he would rehearse it and when he had it down cold he would lay it on Soupy.

I couldn't wait.

However, the next three or four times I went into Hot Bagels someone else was behind the counter and I began getting worried that maybe Raz had returned to Morocco after humiliating himself in front of an angry American comedian. But finally there he was. He greeted me with a huge smile and great excitement.

"I did it!" he exclaimed.

"You did?  Wow!!  What happened?"

"His eyes opened up, real wide! And then, BIG smile! And then he says, YOU WATCHED THE SHOW!!!"

Ah, Soupy Sales. I loved that guy.

Come back, Soupy.

********

And when you do, don't forget to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Man Bites Dog

Way back on June 3rd I received an email from Antoinette, a researcher at a Dutch television program called Man Bijt Hond (Man Bites Dog), asking if I might be interested in participating in some broadcasts they were planning to do in New York in early September. I was told that Man Bites Dog is a long-running show that's on the air five nights a week in the Netherlands and that they'd be coming to the city to commemorate the discovery of New York by the explorer Henry Hudson 400 years ago. Someone had the idea of including a segment about a real New York cab driver as an unusual angle for a story and they found me right here at this blog. Filming would take place during the first week of September for shows that would be on the air in Holland from Sept. 7th through the 11th.

You get five minutes of fame, right? I realized I've only used up about a minute of it when I was interviewed on BBC Breakfast back in November and so I still have about four minutes left on my account! I said "yes".

Thus began a long series of emails between myself and Antoinette that culminated in a plan: I would show up at the crew's hotel in the Flatiron District in a taxi for three consecutive nights; the cab would be outfitted with special lights, sound equipment, and cameras, and I myself would have a microphone attached under my shirt; I would meet with Cas, the interviewer and cameraman, and Pepijn, the sound man; and the three of us would cruise around Manhattan for three hours each night in search of material that could later be edited for the show.


And so I became part of a real television production.

Pictures:

Antoinette

One of the crew setting up a camera angle on the big star of the show

Cas, the cameraman and interviewer, with the hand-held

Crew member setting up the back seat camera

Passengers shared the back seat with sound man Pepijn

On the second night Cas set up this camera on the hood of the cab

Cas, "NYC Gene", and Pepijn

Video clips from the show:

http://www.manbijthond.nl/fragmenten/net-talkshow

http://www.manbijthond.nl/fragmenten/taxichauffeur-schrijver

So how did it go? Mostly it was great fun. And quite flattering that such attention was being paid to me. I will admit to feeling a bit of vindication in the sense that taxi driving is normally a relatively anonymous occupation without any group support. Many things happen that you wish could be witnessed or acknowledged by others. So it was gratifying to finally have that happen in such a big way. They told me close to a million people watch this show every night.

It was also a learning experience. We accumulated more than 7 hours of footage. From that only about 8 minutes of material were actually used. So I learned something about the power of editing. Unless the person being interviewed has some kind of agreement that he has approval rights over the final cut, how he is portrayed is very much in the hands of the editor, or the director via the editor. In this case, I didn't think the material about my personal life was relevant or particularly interesting and I thought the bits at the end of the segments were pretty lame. I wouldn't have included them.

On the other hand, I thought my comments about taxi driving and the interactions with the passengers were presented very well. We had to get the know-how down about getting people to come into the cab, by the way. We found that passengers hailing us from the street didn't want to get into a cab with two guys in the front and another guy with odd machinery in the back. So what we eventually learned was that it was best to park the taxi in a busy night-life area and then Cas would go out on the sidewalk and solicit volunteers. Plus offering a free ride didn't hurt.

My favorite sequence with the passengers was the one with the screaming actress. I should point out that the video she had been in earlier that day was a spoof of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. I think an impression may have been given that she had been in the original, which was not the case. Also the decibel level of her scream was not given justice in that shot. It was much louder! Unfortunately, my comment of "I think you broke my windshield!" was not included. She nearly did! Her name, by the way, is Mika Henderson and she can be contacted at www.myspace.com/sugarnspikes should anyone reading this be in the market for a superb screamer.

Another thing that was left out was that the girl who was with the guy who was so enthusiastic about the celebrities I've had in my cab surprised us, when she learned that the show we were doing was from Holland, by speaking Dutch fluently! It turned out she is from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America. I thought that was pretty amazing.

So there it is. Cabs Are For Kissing takes to the airwaves. Hope it brings some smiles.

BBC Breakfast and the Art of the Plug

I got a lesson during the course of a single shift last week that is something any guest on a talk show must learn when he's trying to "sell" something. And that is, when you're being interviewed you've got find a way to get in the plug. It turns out to be something of an art. Here's what happened...

It began with a prearranged meeting at 6 p.m. with a couple of Australian journalists in front of the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street. They had contacted me a few days prior with a request for an interview with a "real New York cabbie" about the election results. It was to be on a radio station known as 3AW in Melbourne with a talk-show host named Neil Mitchell, the most popular talk radio guy in those parts, I was told, with an audience of a million people.

So off I went at the very beginning of my shift to the CBS building and there I met my two Aussie contact fellows, Justin and Sebastian, who climbed into my cab. We chatted for a few minutes and then I was handed a cell phone. On the other end was what might be called a Professional Voice. Do you know how someone sounds who speaks for a living? It's smooth and kind of resonant without the "umms" and "uhhs" that punctuate the sentences of non-professionals. It was Neil Mitchell, and we were on the air in Melbourne.

I was asked a few questions about the election and about taxi driving in New York. I thought I answered them adequately and then, after less than a minute - zip - it was over. I had another five minutes of conversation with Justin and Sebastian and then - zip - they were off to attend to other matters and were gone. I drove down the street, picked up my first fare of the night, and the rest of my shift was underway.

But as I headed toward the East Side with my passenger, something didn't seem quite right. They had told me that I had just communicated to a million people and yet it felt like nothing. There had been no feedback. I mean, when you communicate the idea is that there's someone on the other end to receive it and an effect is created, right? Here there was just a vacuum, and it was unsatisfying. And worse than that, I had intended to mention the name of my blog on the air but the thing went by so quickly that the opportunity had slipped right past me. So I felt a bit frustrated, as well.

However, I took it as a learning experience - practice, really - because I knew there would be an even bigger fish to fry that very night. Just before I'd left my house to drive into Manhattan I had received an email from a contact person from the BBC asking me if I'd be interested in appearing on one of their shows, BBC Breakfast, at 3 a.m. They also were interested in interviewing a real New York cabbie to get a local reaction to the election, and I had called the number they'd given me and accepted the invitation.

Now you have to understand, I am not a movie star nor a head of state. I am merely a New York cab driver. I am not used to receiving one - much less two - invitations to go on the air in the very same night. So my mood was elevated and this helped me to have a better than usual night as a member of my own profession, culminating in a lucrative out-of-town job to Ridgewood, New Jersey, that on any other night would have been the highlight of the evening.

In fact it was during the return ride to the city from Jersey, just as I was crossing the George Washington Bridge, that I received a phone call from Emily, the charming producer of the show, who asked me to bring my cab right up to the site from which the show would be broadcast, the Skylight Diner at the corner of 34th Street and 9th Avenue. The plan was that I would be interviewed while sitting in the taxi. In speaking to Emily, I found out a bit more about BBC Breakfast. It turns out to be Britain's primary early morning show on the "telly". It's on the air every day for three hours and has an audience all over the U.K. of - gasp - FIVE MILLION PEOPLE.



Somehow the concept of five million viewers in the U.K. was much more intimidating than one million listeners in Australia, which I took in stride. I did the math - I get about 50 people a day in my cab. I would have to drive 100,000 shifts to reach five million. And it would take me 274 years to do it if I drove every day of the year.

But it was the next part that really got to me:

IT WAS LIVE.

Suddenly it occurred to me that a live mike equals power. I could say whatever I wanted and it would be heard by all these people, imagine that. I started to think of interesting things to say...

"The Revolution is here. I am your leader."

"REDRUM!"

"Paul is dead."

"All of you children watching, go to Mum's pocketbook right now and send the money to ______ (my address)."

"You have been abducted by aliens but when I say the words 'fidgity-doo' you will remember none of it. Fidgity-doo."

Of course, I said none of these things. What happened was I arrived at the diner at 3 a.m. and was greeted by Emily. It was an interesting sight, actually, to see this 24-hour diner with so much activity going on at that time of night. The streets in that area are quite deserted at 3 in the morning, yet here was this hub of busy-ness with the ability to transmit images and sound to the other side of the planet. I know we take this technology for granted now but, really, that is incredible if you think about it.


Emily briefed me on what was to happen which was that in about half an hour the show's host (or "presenter", as he is called) Bill Turnbull, would come out to the sidewalk, approach me in the cab, and ask me a few questions. That was all the preparation I had. So for the next 30 minutes I hung around the diner watching how the show is done while other guests were interviewed, and then, at the appointed time, I went into my cab. Out came Bill Turnbull - lights, camera, action - and the interview was underway.

He asked me a few questions about the city's reaction to the election, what's on people's minds,

and about being a taxi driver in New York, and was about to wrap up our little chat when I realized the moment of truth was at hand. If I was going to let five million people know the name of my blog I was going to have to act boldly.

So I did it.

Even though he hadn't asked me, I acted as if he had and shamelessly let the plug drop. "The job is so adventurous," said I, "that I started writing an online blog called 'Cabs Are For Kissing'."

And then, bless his heart, Bill Turnbull picked right up on that and repeated the name of the blog for all to hear again.

The result: over 3,000 hits and more than 50 comments and emails from all over Britain. And that is a great, great feeling to know that an individual can create what is essentially a personal magazine from his own home and have that kind of reach around the world. Mind boggling, really.

And so I'd like to thank everyone who took the trouble to find me here. Welcome aboard! Please come by often, and I'll try to keep it interesting for you.

********

And if that's not enough and you want even more New York, just click right here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Man Who Bought Third Base

I had three memorable rides last night (Saturday).

The first was a woman who didn't know left from right - literally. She was an attractive, thirty-something with two small children taking a short trip up 8th Avenue from 34th to 47th. When I got within a couple of blocks of the destination I asked, as I always do, if she'd like to be dropped off on the left or the right side of the one-way road.

"Which side is the right?" she asked.

I looked at her in the mirror. She had a puzzled look on her face and she was making motions with her hands as she tried to figure out which was left and which was right. I thought she might be joking around with me and was about to laugh out loud but then I observed that she was quite sincere in her effort to solve this problem.

I pointed to the right side of the avenue and told her that unless something had drastically changed since the morning, that was the right side. She indicated that that was the side she wanted and I immediately pulled the cab over to the curb.

"Thank you," she said as she paid me $7.00 for the $4.90 fare. "Sorry." And with that she carefully ushered the two children onto the sidewalk and was on her way.

Now what I found remarkable here was that this was not a translation problem - English was her natural language - and she conducted herself as a normally intelligent person in all other ways. It was just that for some reason I will never know she had not mastered "left" and "right".

This must have been the person they had in mind when they invented GPS.

The second memorable ride was a teenager in a Yankee shirt whom I took to 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in the Jackson Heights section of Queens. This kid had been to the Yankee game earlier in the day and had caught a foul ball which he held in his hand. He told me the ball had been hit by a player on the Kansas City Royals in the second inning and it occurred to me that, since I had been watching the beginning of the game on TV before starting my work day, I must have seen this very ball on my own television. He gave it to me to hold for a minute and so it was as if the baseball had come through the screen and wound up in my own hand, like they do in animation or computerized graphics. Very cool!

It was the third ride of the night, however, that was the most remarkable. At 10:15 I picked up four middle-aged tourists from Huntsville, Texas, and drove them over to Rockefeller Center. They were in good spirits and doing the usual tourist things, this being their first time in New York City. A particularly jovial fellow sat up front with me who seemed to have a permanent smile on his face.

They, too, had been to Yankee Stadium that day and our conversation was mostly about that. This was the game where Alex Rodriguez ("A-Rod") had finally hit his historic 500th home run, an achievement that is, of course, a very big deal in the world of baseball. My passengers told me they had been sitting only two rows away from the spot where the home run ball landed and were actually in the swarm of maniacs trying to get it.

So, having come so close to catching the ball, they decided after the game to stop by one of the shops in the stadium and purchase a couple of souvenir baseballs. But they were told as they came up to the counter that the shop's entire stock of baseballs had been sold out. However, as fate would have it, at that moment an announcement was made in the shop that the bases that had been used in the game were now going on sale. And so the man sitting next to me in my cab on a total impulse had decided to buy third base.

At first I didn't really understand what he meant. "You mean they sell the bases that were actually used in the game?" I asked incredulously. I had never heard of such a thing.

"Yup. That's right."

"How do you know it's really not some other base?"

"Because they have an official major league insignia on it."

"Do you have the base with you?"

"No, they send it in the mail."

"And they only sold the three bases?"

"Yeah, I took third because that's the position A-Rod plays."

"How much did you pay for this?"

My passenger hesitated a bit before answering. I sensed some embarrassment here. "Uh... two thousand dollars."

"What!" I exclaimed, "you paid two thousand dollars for... a base!"

He laughed and said, "Yeah, I know, there's a sucker born every minute, right?"

And then one of the wives chimed in that not only that, they had also bought "Rolex" watches on the street earlier in the day and did I think they were real?

Oh my god! These people were from some movie where country bumpkins arrive in the big metropolis and within an hour have had their pockets picked clean by quick-talking, city-slicker con men. I decided to try a sales pitch of my own.

"Did you know," I asked, "that the city council has approved a plan to sell shares in the Brooklyn Bridge? It's going to be like a condominium. It will be owned by private investors who then will be able to charge a toll for crossing it and the profits will go to the shareholders."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and they have authorized certain veteran cab drivers to accept application fees. If you give me your names and mailing addresses, along with the fee of a hundred dollars, I will see that the forms are sent to you. So... do you want to buy a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge?"

There was what is called in the theater a "pregnant pause".

They looked at me. I looked at them. And then told them that I was kidding. Of course!

Not that they really believed me anyway. They weren't that stupid. In fact, they may not have been stupid at all. The man on my right went on to tell me that his two grand also bought A-Rod's actual signature on the base, a hologram on the base that is the same hologram that was used to identify the ball that was hit by A-Rod for the 500th homer, and a certificate from Major League Baseball that verifies that this was the base used in that particular game. In the crazy world of baseball memorabilia, the damned thing may already be worth more than he paid for it.

Maybe that's why the man who bought third base never stopped smiling.






I've heard a rumor that if you click here for Pictures From A Taxi you may never stop smiling, too.

Chefs, Woodpeckers, and George Costanza

Last Tuesday night was going along like any other night shift...

-- a ride to Grand Central

-- people going out for the evening

-- some guy who took the subway to the wrong stop and now needed a cab because he was running late

-- an "inner city" kid going from the East Village to Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn with whom I discussed in detail the All-Star Game and the plight of the National League.

But as the night wore on the shift acquired a little theme. Within a few hours I had several memorable rides that each had something to do with the world of television...

10:35 pm - I was again discussing baseball's All-Star Game, this time with a male thirty-something going from 33rd and Broadway to Clinton and Grand in the Lower East Side, when the guy tells me that for 7 years he held the exact same job that the George Costanza character played in "Seinfeld" - assistant to the traveling secretary of the NY Yankees. This meant that for 7 years he was the butt of jokes from his friends and even suspected he was being referred to as "Costanza" behind his back. He said he and the staff would meet with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner every day at 10 am for a strategy meeting and I was surprised to hear him say that Steinbrenner is actually quite a nice guy, at least in his opinion. So why did he leave the job? The pay was too low, only 30 grand per year. Okay, but I'm thinking, how cool would it be to have your office in Yankee Stadium?

11:40 pm - I took a young lady from 72nd and Amsterdam to 49th and 2nd who turned out to be someone I think of as being an "uplifting personality". Someone who is so cheerful, so conversational, and so interesting and interested at the same time that you actually feel uplifted after being around her for awhile. We had one of those discussions that travel effortlessly from one subject to another and probably could have gone on for an hour, only to be abruptly ended by arriving at her destination. As she started to pay me she noticed something on the other side of the intersection and said, "Oh, there's one of my billboards!"

She was referring to an illuminated advertisement on the outside of a telephone booth for a reality show called "Top Chef" that airs on the Bravo channel on Wednesdays. It turns out my passenger is a chef who is currently competing with other culinary rivals for a prize of $100,000 and there she was, with the other contestants, in her white chef hat staring out at me from the ad - while also staring out at me from the back seat of my cab. Another unique taxi-driving experience for me! Actually, I've long imagined how wild it would be to have a passenger in the cab who was also the model whose picture happened to be used in the advertisement on top of the cab. I guess this was the next best thing.

Anyway, her name is Sara Nguyen and you see her here posing for me in front of her own picture. I want everyone who reads this to watch the show and root for Sara. Then when she wins she's going to invite us all over to her place and cook us a big meal. (joke)

Go, Sara!

2:32 am - the streets of Manhattan become relatively empty on a Tuesday after midnight and this is when crafty taxi drivers distinguish themselves from the ones who don't really know what they're doing. You know, driving a cab is a lot like being a fisherman. You have to know where they're biting and where the big ones are. It takes experience.

Anyway, not to brag, but here's how I reeled in a passenger at 2:32 am. Anyone who's ever driven a cab in NYC will appreciate this. I was driving down one of my standard late-night cruising streets in Midtown (no, I will not tell you which one!) and I know that on this particular street there's a building where film post production goes on 24/7 and they do not use "black cars" (car services used by corporations to give their employees a free ride home). So I always have an eye on this place. A woman came out of the building and gave me just enough of a glance to tell me she wanted a cab. I slowed down, hoping she would hail me, but she did not. Instead, she kept walking in the opposite direction from which I was driving. Yet I knew she wanted a cab and I knew the only reason she didn't raise her arm was because I was not driving in the direction she wanted to go.

So, instead of giving up on her, I circled the block and within 30 seconds I was back to the spot where I thought she would be if she hadn't already found another taxi. And she was. And she got into my cab.

And that is how expert fishermen catch fish in NYC.

She was headed out to Forest Hills in Queens, a 20 minute ride. I asked her if she was editing a film. She was. And that led to a conversation that pretty much took up the whole trip. The film is going to be a 90-minute documentary about the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that was thought to be extinct, but now is thought to be maybe not extinct after all. She told me there have been sightings of the woodpecker in deeply forested and remote areas by reliable "birders" (as they're called), but no one has ever gotten a photograph of it. And that the film is intended for release in movie theaters.

I thought that was interesting, in fact, very interesting, but - come on - how could a movie like this be commercial enough to compete with regular feature films? She told me some amazing statistic about how many birders there are out there. Something like 42 million people. And that to them finding this woodpecker is like the quest for the Holy Grail. It's the ultimate of the ultimates.

Still, she admitted, the thing may wind up on Animal Planet.

Chalk another one up to "the things you learn from driving a cab". Extinct woodpeckers - who knew?

3:15 am - coming back to Manhattan from this ride, I crossed the 59th Street Bridge and was heading west on 63rd Street when, just as I began to go through a green light at 3rd Avenue, I witnessed something you never see except on television - a high speed car chase. Screaming through a red light at 70 miles per hour was a small, white car that, if I'd been two seconds further into the intersection, would have t-boned my cab. About three blocks behind it were about 20 police cars which, to their credit, were making sure the intersections were clear before going through them.

Actually, it looked to me like the runaway car was going to get away. It also looked kind of surreal because this is a scene you never see in the city. But you do see it in cop shows all the time.

As I traveled west toward my usual cruising routes it occurred to me that it was like I'd spent Tuesday night at home and watched TV. I'd seen a sitcom, a food show, an animal show, and an action flick. All that was missing was a talk show. But, then again, my cab is a talk show, so I guess I had that, too.

And all you have to do to see the Pictures From A Taxi show is click here.